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This much buzzed-about brand’s original location, which opened in 2003 across from the Carlyle, was one-upped when its second storefront—a stunning 12,000-square-foot space—opened on Central Park South just four months later. In both, a soothing cream palette and Jason Lamberth’s dark, weathered wood furnishings set the stage for the spas’ holistic and Asian-inspired wellness programs. Vinyasa-based yoga classes held in sleek, mahogany-floored studios reel in wound-up Type As, while Core Fusion classes, a blend of Pilates, pliés, and stretching that leaves legs like jelly, attract (and produce) über-toned workout bunnies. These rigorous classes are held as many as fourteen times a day in airy, ballet bar-equipped studios. Past heavy wood doors, more down-tempo guests sip Elemental tea and shuffle in thick robes and Havaianas among fifteen rooms for skin treatments that are either high-tech (Z-Peels and Cool Light Lasers) or millennia-old (acupuncture-powered “lifts”). Post workout, yogis and Core fans can be spotted in the Zen zone, getting detoxifying massages or calming reiki. In July 2006, Eliza Petrescu, the much-touted Romanian-born brow sculptor, brought her Eliza’s Eyes brand to Exhale. Trained pluckers do duty at the Central Park spa, while Petrescu herself works out of the Madison Avenue location; some fans book six months in advance for her seven-minute wax-and-tweeze makeovers. — Rose Reis

Exhale thanks you with twenty percent off your next purchase of classes, spa treatments, or retail items when you refer a friend. If you buy a set of ten massages, facials, or classes, you get an eleventh one free.

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Best of New York Awards

• Best Postnatal Program (2007)
• Best of New York: Best Lazy Exercise (2005)
• Best of New York: Best New Yoga Studio (2004)

Featured In

• Saving Face (2/9/04)
• Class Action (11/3/03)